ACCESSION NUMBER:382045
FILE ID:EFS219
DATE:03/07/95
TITLE:(FS) RESENTMENT OVER U.S.-FRENCH SPY FLAP COULD LAST YEARS (03/07/95)
TEXT:*95030718.FFE
*EFS219 03/07/95
(FS) RESENTMENT OVER U.S.-FRENCH SPY FLAP COULD LAST YEARS
(Washington Post 03/07/95 William Drozdiak article) (880)
(Following FS material not for publication)
PARIS, March 6 -- Less than two weeks after a French request to remove five
American spy suspects was made public, Paris and Washington appear to have
muffled the embarrassing controversy. But it has eroded trust between the
two allies, inflicted serious political damage on Prime Minister Edouard
Balladur and caused lasting harm to relations between French and U.S.
intelligence, according to officials in both governments.
While President Clinton said last week he believes the matter was resolved
and would not discuss it any further, resentment over the affair appears to
run deep. A senior French official said contacts with the Americans at a
Group of Seven meeting in Brussels on information technology, attended by
Vice President Gore, were "nothing less than glacial."
The consequences for Balladur appear even more dramatic. The spy flap
briefly distracted attention from an explosive wiretap scandal, but it also
undermined Balladur's authority and aggravated a breach in his government
between ministers supporting his bid for the presidency and those backing
his Gaullist rival, Paris Mayor Jacques Chirac. Polls show Balladur has
lost his once commanding lead and observers now predict Chirac will win a
second-round vote on May 7.
But the most devastating impact is being felt by the two countries'
intelligence agencies, officials say. "This will not blow over in a matter
of months; it will take several years, at least, before we can talk about
serious cooperation again in intelligence matters," a U.S. official said.
French intelligence sources echoed those sentiments, deploring the
unprecedented leak to the newspaper Le Monde which reported Feb. 22 that
1rance had asked the United States to repatriate five agents, including
four diplomats, for alleged acts of political and economic espionage.
In the past, France has benefited from intelligence gleaned by U.S.
satellite reconnaissance and international eavesdropping. American aid was
vital in capturing the international terrorist known as "Carlos the Jackal"
last August in Sudan and deporting him to France. There has also been
important sharing of information between the Washington and Paris on such
sensitive areas as Algeria, Iraq and Iran, officials said.
"Right now the mood is too poisoned to believe that we will ever be able to
cooperate on anything like we did before, unless there is a major crisis
that poses a serious threat to both governments," a French official said.
With the passing of the Cold War, the United States has become embroiled in
a growing number of economic espionage conflicts with France and other
allies, as countries jostle for advantage in a global marketplace that is
becoming feverishly competitive.
U.S. officials have charged that Balladur's powerful ally, Interior Minister
Charles Pasqua, chose to make public the espionage charges -- apparently
for domestic political purposes -- despite a long tradition of discreet
handling for all such conflicts between friendly nations.
French newspapers and government officials have fingered a top aide to
Pasqua as the most likely person to have leaked the story to Le Monde.
Several years ago the same aide was caught rummaging through a neighbor's
garbage while serving as a commercial attache in Houston at a time when
French agents were suspected of spying on Texas Instruments and other U.S.
companies.
As a political ploy, the espionage controversy has failed to bolster
Balladur's standing in the presidential race and has revived charges by his
opponents that Pasqua is a reckless and ruthless politician who should not
be entrusted with France's internal security.
French newspapers have quoted passages from a top-secret report by French
counterintelligence describing the recruitment of Henri Plagnol, a civil
servant who served briefly as an adviser to Balladur. He was forced to
resign after he admitted taking about $400 from a woman identified as a CIA
agent as payment for writing a five-page paper on "France's relations with
NATO."
According to the counterintelligence report, Plagnol met the woman at a
UNESCO cocktail party, where she was introduced as the public relations
official of a Dallas foundation. He was dumbfounded to learn she was a CIA
agent because the information she sought seemed so banal.
After being tagged as a security risk, the report said, Plagnol agreed to
serve as a double agent on behalf of French counterintelligence to feed
information to his American pursuers and ultimately serve as the principal
bait to entrap them.
The published accounts have depicted U.S. intelligence agents in France as
naive and ill-informed as they sought to extract information on France's
negotiating positions in the final months before a global trade agreement
was reached in December 1993.
Plagnol reportedly was paid $1,000 cash at each of several furtive meetings
in Paris hotels, where he was asked to fill out questionnaires and undergo
interrogation by CIA analysts. The questions ranged from whether Balladur
would run for the presidency to why the French government is so protective
of farmers, who represent only 5 percent of the population.
But as Plagnol pointed out, all of the information he provided in return for
such handsome payments was available to any attentive reader of French
1ewspapers.
(Preceding FS material not for publication)
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